Just when I was about to give Fox News another chance to live up to its “fair and balanced” slogan I learned that anchor emeritus Brit Hume, in a January 3rd airing of Fox News Sunday, urged Tiger Woods, the world’s best golfer and one of the world’s most accomplished ladies’ men, to give up his Buddhist faith and join the ranks of the righteous in Christianity.
I don’t knock Brit Hume for being a Christian. I respect his beliefs as much as the next man’s beliefs. As an evangelical Christian he is using his chosen pulpit to serve God in the best way he knows how. He truly BELIEVES that Jesus is the only way to Heaven. He truly BELIEVES that Tiger Woods will sail through this crisis much easier if he would only repent and ask his (Brit Hume’s) savior for forgiveness.
The problem is not that Hume decided to express his heartfelt convictions in the hopes that he might help a fellow human being along on the road to redemption. The problem is that he did it on Fox.
Fox News has been the highest rated cable news network in the United States for a number of years. Last month (January 2010) it was the highest rated basic cable channel in primetime. Also last month a leading polling firm reported that Fox News was the country’s most trusted news network, with 49% of respondents saying they trust Fox News. For those of us who strive for thoughtful, open-minded governance, believe that smart people should run the country, and who value cultural diversity and freedom of religion, these statistics are frightening.
Late last year Fox News was accused by White House communications director Anita Dunn of being “either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.” It is no secret that Fox has, at the very least, a conservative “slant” in its reporting coverage. And recent opinion polling seems to indicate that it is slanted more to the right than its competitors, MSNBC for example, are slanted to the left. An October 2009 Pew Research poll revealed Fox News to be the most ideological network in America.
If these things are true, Fox News will play a huge role in upcoming Congressional elections and in the next race for the presidency. With so many Americans depending on the network as their only source of information about the world around them, the brain washing delivered each day by conservative pundits on such programs as The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck will have a profound impact on the balance of power in Washington.
This, of course, does not make liberals happy. In fact, it scares the Hell out of them. The thought of self-righteous, fundamentalist , militant oligarchs (think of a Dick Cheney – Pat Robertson ticket) deciding our fate is enough to turn a moderate liberal into a socialist, and a centrist republican into a voting democrat.
The majority of those who have not yet been blinded by the glare of Fox’s headlights can still see the truck coming. Not everyone is willing to follow the other lemmings over the cliff. The voters who are going to decide the next election are the fiscal conservatives like me who are willing to concede a little tax here and a little privacy there in order to prevent a slide toward theocracy or fascism (now picture Dick Cheney wearing a monocle). It will be decided by people who do not know which candidate they will be voting for until they have actually seen the debates.
I have a feeling those who refuse to watch anything but Fox News already know who they are voting for. They don’t know the candidate’s name yet, but that’s not important. They’ll listen to Fox about the time the election comes around. Then they’ll know. And ain’t nobody gonna change their mind. “Now get off my property!”
A great deal of attention has been paid to Tiger Woods’s lack of expression and insincere body language during the delivery of his recent public apology for infidelity. I admit I don’t know anything about body language cues beyond what I picked up tonight from Wikipedia, but take a look at the expressions and body language of the panelists in the Fox News Sunday clip above. Run it back and forth in slow motion and observe. At the beginning of the video, Chris Wallace and the others seem to be in a jovial, bantering mood. By the end of Brit Hume’s short sermon their attention has been averted (disbelief), their fingers are locked together (contemplation), and there is stony silence (I’ll go out on a limb and say this indicates speechlessness).
Not only did Hume scare away a few thousand potential Republican votes with his proselytizing lecture, he managed to greatly insult Buddhists everywhere. As a Buddhist, Tiger is not seeking forgiveness and redemption from a supernatural being, but from his fans, his sponsors, and his wife. Buddhists rely on attention to their own actions and compassion for the feelings of others to keep them from getting in trouble. The Dalai Lama himself, in the United States this week to meet with the President, summed it up this way when asked about Tiger’s indiscretions: “Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.”
Tiger Woods doesn’t need to pray for forgiveness because Tiger Woods is not a Christian, he’s a Buddhist. His path to redemption is not the same as Brit Hume’s.
I’ll give the last word to Karen Maezen Miller, a Zen Buddhist priest who has a simple, unpretentious website from which she expounds in a simple, unpretentious manner. This is what she had to say about Woods and Hume.
Both of them are equally eligible for redemption. Atonement starts with apology: the simple act of seeking forgiveness for the harm caused by one’s own selfish ignorance. Atonement is central to all great religions and all religions are great. They teach us to transcend the false supremacy of one’s own ego. No matter what faith we profess to have, our own persistent self-righteousness gives us the occasion to atone many, many times a day. Forgiveness, in a sense, is easy. I would imagine, though, that the next step in Buddhism would be equally difficult for either of them: to forget oneself.
… It’s clear that Woods doesn’t practice the selfless compassion that is at the heart of Buddhism. It’s equally clear that Hume doesn’t practice the selfless compassion that is at the heart of Christianity. Sadly, I call the situation fair and balanced.
2nd time to try to post — I am kind of gong off on a tangent line but I really believe that the bible, the koran, etc. has been manipulated by men(women), to be more on the gov’t side to control people. now — be for you disgregard this, everyone can find our higher power within ourselves firstj. Gotta hate the Big Bro theory – off on different tangent – sorry – calc getting the best of me today – tgi sss – spring break
roberta
February 26th, 2010